Mini Stories
by westwindwaker
Summary: A short collection of small stories in one chapter. These stories are each based on an individual song. Written for the Song Shuffle challenge. Characters include: Skull, Colonnello, Lal Mirch, Shoichi, Lambo, Ryohei, Tsuna, Gokudera, Verde, and Reborn.


A/N I'm doing the ten song shuffle challenge.

Disclaimer: I don't own either KHR. I also don't own any of these songs.

_**Octopus's Garden**_** by The Beatles**

When Skull first met Oodako, his octopus, he was scared out of his wits. After all, the behemoth was a lot bigger than him. Still, his fear did not cause him to freeze. For once, Skull appeared calm and capable. Eventually, Skull had managed to walk over to the octopus. He had then introduced himself to him. To his infinite surprise, Oodako answered in kind by writing his name in the soft sand.

Ever since that day, Skull's and Oodako's relationship continued to grow. They spent the majority of their time in the other's presence. For example, if Skull was somewhere, Oodako would be close by, even if he had to leave the sea.

Two events cemented their relationship of being best friends. The first event was when Skull fell off a cliff. Luckily, Oodako was there to catch him. The second event was when Verde tried to capture Oodako for experimentation. Skull had bravely charged in and took the hit for Oodako. Ever since then, they have had this unyielding trust for each other.

Over the years, this trust has served the two well. Although Reborn often called him a failure, with Oodako's help Skull could pull off many of his missions for the Carcassa family. Oodako was a great partner in Skull's opinion. The octopus's superior height and his skills for beating up the enemies made him a great asset.

Skull and Oodako also did fun activites together. For instance, they went surfing together. Skull would attempt to ride the waves on a surfboard and Oodako would pick him up when he fell off of the board.

Skull and Oodako even planted a garden together once. They did everything together.

_**When I'm Sixty-Four**_** by The Beatles**

Colonnello had fallen in love with Lal Mirch, his teacher. She didn't know this though, no one did. He hoped that, in the future, he would have the guts to tell her. As things stood, he was just her favorite student.

Colonnello was afraid to confess his undying love for her. From what he could tell, she would just reject him. She was always acting coldly towards everyone. He knew that he wouldn't be any different.

However, he could hope. If only he could find some way to endear himself to her then maybe she wouldn't reject him. Therefore, whenever he could, Colonnello tried to help his love out.

He did this in many ways. After practice was over, he would often stay behind and help Lal Mirch out with cleaning up. Colonnello was usually rewarded by a small smile for this action. He would also open the door for her. She didn't appreciate this action and often whacked him on the head for his insolence. He loved her anyways.

During lunch time, Colonnello would try to sit with her. Usually, she didn't allow this to happen. She would brusquely brush him off. He did manage to succeed a few times, although when that happened she often ignored him.

As time passed, they became closer to each other. However, one day Lal Mirch's manner abruptly changed. It was after a masked man visited her. She would often be seen leaving the grounds and she became more and more distant.

This worried Colonnello greatly. He could only hope that she would confide in him.

Finally, Colonnello could take it no longer. He decided to follow Lal Mirch on one of her trips. Strangely enough, she was going up a mountain with six other people. As he followed them, he was caught and told to leave by Lal Mirch.

He couldn't just leave however. Colonnello had seen the pain etched into Lal Mirch's face and wanted to help her. He crept along behind them silently and somehow avoided detection. When he made it to the top, a bright light was shining. Worried, he made his way over to his love and pushed her out of the way.

As Colonnello lost consciousness, he had to wonder how this event would affect their future together. He had planned to confess to her soon. He even had the engagement ring.

_**Everything Is Ending**_** by Chameleon Circuit**

After his second trip to the future, Shoichi didn't go again for a while. He no longer wanted to be a musician, not after what he had seen. Instead, he bought new text books and studied religiously.

Soon enough, he was once again curious about the future. After school one day, he made up his mind to once again visit it. He threw down some ammo for the ten year bazooka and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Instead of ending up in an engineering university like he was expecting, he was in the middle of a deserted building. Most of the sides of the building were knocked down, as if hit by some massive weapon. In the distance, Shoichi could see fires and hear people screaming.

Shoichi's first thought was that the much debated apocalypse that people kept talking about actually happened. This thought was quickly struck down though when he glanced at his phone. It was playing some weird video.

The part that struck Shoichi though was the person talking. It was the white-haired man he had ran into in both of his excursions into the future.

Shoichi felt anger and disgust at himself as he realized that he had caused this. This was his fault for messing with the future.

Within a few minutes, Shoichi returned to the past. Everything was how he left it. This did nothing to settle his upset stomach however.

Over the next few days, Shoichi kept traveling to the future to see if that third time had been a fluke. After his seventh time there, he realized that it was not.

Everything was ending as he knew it in the future, and Shoichi could do nothing to stop it.

_**Type 40**_** by Chameleon Circuit**

One day, Lambo took out his ten year bazooka and considered it. He knew how he felt about his toy, but he couldn't help but wonder what his bazooka would think if it was sentient.

Lambo thought that it would probably be annoyed by the amount of times it was used. Lambo felt a pang of guilt, but quickly shook his head and dispelled it. The bazooka wasn't alive…

Right? Somehow, the five-year old couldn't shake the idea from his mind. If his bazooka was alive, they could have so much fun together! He would actually have something to do while the meanie Reborn took up all of Tsuna's time.

An hour later, Gokudera found Lambo talking quietly to the ten year bazooka in a corner. Shaking his head, Gokudera turned around and left.

_**Mr. Pond**_** by Chameleon Circuit**

Ryohei glared angrily at Sawada and punched the wall hard. The Sun Guardian was angry at his boss. Recently, his sister Kyoko had been endangered yet again.

This time, she had been kidnapped. Thankfully, by the time they had arrived she was unharmed. Still, his sister Kyoko had been so scared. It had hurt Ryohei to see the expression on his younger sister's face.

In his opinion, Sawada should cut all ties with his sister if he isn't able to properly protect her. The boy needed to man up.

Eventually, Ryohei calmed down and forgot about this incident. A few months later, they went to the future.

When Sawada told Kyoko about the mafia, Ryohei lost it. He punched Sawada in the face.

_**Time Out**_** by Hiromi**

The Vongola family needed a nice rest from their daily activities. In order to make this day of rest happen, Vongola Decimo ordered everyone to take a day off of work.

He also told everyone to come to the mansion for a special party. His guardians handled the entertainment, while Kyoko and Haru made the food for the guests.

Tsuna was allowed a rare time out from his duties as Vongola Decimo. As he interacted with his friends and family, he was able to relax for the first time in months. He had fun.

By the time dinner was served, Gokudera-kun was seated at the piano, fingers poised to start playing. While the guests ate and chatted, music flowed around them.

All in all, the night was a success. Everyone felt rejuvenated for the days ahead.

_**Your Horoscope for Today**_** by Weird Al**

Colonnello was having a horrible week. Somehow, in the past few days, he's managed to fall face first into the mud multiple times. It was annoying, and he was having a hard time washing out all of the dried mud from his clothes.

The first time he fell into the mud was because of Reborn. The Sun Arcobaleno had purposely tripped him. When asked why, Reborn had replied a vague 'Jupiter'. It was infuriating.

After leaving Reborn's presence, Colonnello had gone back home to change. On the way back, a car tried to run him over. To avoid it, he had to jump into the mud again. As he got back up, he looked around for the car only to see that it left.

Once he had returned home and showered, the rest of the day had gone off without a hitch.

The day after however, came with the return of the mud. It was raining heavily. Everywhere he looked was mud. He had to go out however. Lal Mirch was waiting for him that day.

When he found her, she told him to lie face down in the mud and stay still. She explained it as some sort of exercise in patience and camouflage. She had him stay there for hours.

When he returned back home, Colonnello cleaned up and went to bed.

The next morning also brought muddy times along with it. When Colonnello came to, he was sleeping on a bed made of mud. He carefully looked around and spotted Viper hovering nearby. As he went to chase the illusionist, Colonnello slipped on the mud and landed in face first. During this slip up, Viper managed to get away.

Annoyed, Colonnello showered and went to get ready for the day. When he was about to leave, he noticed the paper from a few days ago opened on the table. He didn't leave it there.

Curious, Colonnello went to investigate. It was opened to the horoscope page.

As the Rain Arcobaleno read his horoscope, his eyebrow twitched.

_Cancer – The position of Jupiter says that you should spend the rest of the week face down in the mud._

He now knew what was going on. The others were pranking him.

_**Smells like Nirvana **_**by Weird Al**

The small body of Hayato Gokudera bounced joyfully up and down as he got ready for his piano recital. Today, all of his father's friends were going to come watch him play. Sis had even promised to make him cookies!

The little kid carefully opened up the piano and pulled himself up onto the bench. Looking around, Hayato was able to spot his older sister Bianchi coming towards him with a plate. When she arrived by his side, she gave him a supportive smile and handed him the plate of cookies.

Hayato looked at the cookies and noticed that they were a deep shade of purple. Giggling, he figured that Bianchi must have accidently put food dye in them.

After looking at his sister for permission, Hayato started munching on the funny looking cookies. Instantly, his mouth was filled with the flavor of chocolate. Sis had put a lot of chocolate chips in.

Once he was done with the plate, he handed it back to his ecstatic sister. She then left and the guests started filing in.

As he turned back to the piano, his tummy started to ache. Startled, he glanced down at it. Before he could do anything about it however, the lights dimmed and a bright spotlight came on around him. It was time for him to play.

Ignoring the ache for now, Hayato started in on the first notes of his music. Halfway through the song however, the ache became unbearable. Tears sprang to his eyes as he struggled through it. He was missing the notes. Instead of playing perfectly, the little boy was now playing disjointedly. Finally, the boy was finished with his song.

Surprisingly, the audience called for an encore. There were whispers all around the room about his playing. They were talking about how he was making a statement by purposely making it disjointed for the latter half. They seemed impressed.

The boy took long, deep breaths and pressed on for a second song. He started to feel a little better and started to play the piano again. A few notes in however, his vision started to fog up. He did his best to play on by memorization alone. Afterwards, the audience clapped.

Once the audience had left, Hayato decided to find Doctor Shamal. He wasn't feeling so well. Maybe he could fix him up.

As the doctor checked him over, Hayato felt faint. The last thing he remembered was Shamal's panicked voice as he passed out.

_**Close But No Cigar**_** by Weird Al**

Verde was in love with the art of science. Out of all the things he had tried in his life, science was the only thing that hadn't left him horribly disappointed. Once he had discovered it, he had never needed to find a new hobby again.

When he was about five years old, Verde had taken up his first hobby: art. He continued on with this, drawing stick figures right and left for an entire year. When he finally felt he showed some promise in his drawings, he showed them to his classmates. Although he received a few compliments on his drawings, he mostly got insults in return for his efforts. From that day on, Verde decided to give up drawing.

Surprisingly, his next choice for a hobby was running. He had seen how the athletic students at his school were admired and praised for their efforts. He had wanted to be like them at the time. After a few weeks of this new hobby of his, during which he got infinitely faster, one of his upperclassmen approached him. Thinking that he would get to join the cool group, Verde had been ecstatic. When the older boy had only threatened him though, Verde knew he had to give up his new hobby if he wanted any chance of surviving school life.

His third and final hobby before science came into his life was playing card games. In actuality, he was quite good at this. This hobby came to an end however when some bullies at his school accused him of cheating and took his cards away.

After that event, he sulked for a few days. Fortunately, his teacher noticed this and started to spend time with him during class breaks. One day, she started to show him science experiments. As it turned out, she had wanted to be a scientist as a child.

From that day forward, Verde had an ever increasing interest in science. Before he left for middle school, he went and told his teacher that he would become a scientist. She had laughed and patted him on the head. Most importantly, she had encouraged him.

As the boy grew up, science became the most important thing in his life. It never disappointed him unlike all those other hobbies and friends he had. He truly loved the art of science.

_**Yesterday**_** by The Beatles**

For once, Reborn was not totally aware of his surroundings. Instead, he was deep in thought about the last time he had seen his beloved boss Luce.

The last time he had seen Luce was a couple of years after the Arcobaleno were turned into infants. She had visited him and asked him if he would like to be her daughter Aria's godfather. He had replied in the positive at the time. After a short chat, she then left.

He had never seen nor heard from her again. Even so, Reborn's memories of Luce were as vivid as if he had just seen her yesterday. It had been years. Reborn couldn't help but be worried about her.

Every once in a while he tried to contact her by phone. It didn't work. Instead, he had to resort to calling her now grown up daughter Aria. When asked, she would tell him that she hadn't seen her mother.

Luce's disappearance made Reborn and the rest of the Arcobaleno sad, even if they didn't usually show it.


End file.
